Harvest Monday 6/10/13

Haven't posted in a few weeks, actually it might be a month, but things have been busy. With summer just days away for us, and the temps getting warmer all of the fruits and veggies have been growing like crazy. Apricot season came and went with a dozen or so nice big pieces of fruit off of the new tree, the old Blenheim gave us quite a large crop of small but tasty fruit. Then it was the new Santa Barbara Plum tree, maybe 15-20 big juicy plums, see picture of the littlest farmer below, sooo good. The old plum tree did not give us much this year, I did prune it pretty hard this winter, so I didn't expect much. Now the first of two crops of figs. The new Brown Turkey has 4-5 nice figs, with many little figs for the fall crop. The older fig tree is where it's at!! A lot of BIG figs, now I just have to beat the squirrels. A few oranges, grapefruit and mandarins still on the trees,

Finally got the garlic and onions dried. Actually TPW did all the work. We should have quite a bit of garlic for the summer and fall

Getting a lot of cucumbers, slicemaster, pickeling, and persian, all good. A lot of cherry tomatoes, Sweet 100, and 1 million kicking out a lot of tasty nuggets. A few larger ones as well from the other plants.﻿

Went to school last week and found this little guy next to the lost and found bin. Got a pair of tongs and a trash can, grabbed him and took him to a better area, for both him and the kids. One of the great things about living and teaching in the Santa Monica Mountains is the wild life. Great reptiles, mammals, birds and plants, and being a science teacher you never know when the next teachable moment is going to poke it's head out. The picture is a little blurry, but he was about 1.5 feet, two small rattles on it's tail. Oh yeah, it was a Western Diamondback Rattlesnake. Haven't seen any in the garden yet?

3 comments:

I love how you have so many luscious fruit trees that produce such abundance for you. Your garden beds look like they are doing beautifully too. Good thing you removed that young rattler from a populated area. We used to deal with them a lot when I lived in the hot dry region of our state (central Washington). Now that I am living on the cool wet coastal area, the only snakes I see are gentle garter snakes.

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A little introduction.

We moved in on December 18th 2009, we are a 1/4 mile from a major southern california freeway, but are trying to make the urban homestead thing work. We have spent a lot of time getting things back in order. We have 22 fruit trees, hence the name, and a small plot set aside for a garden. We have 4 chickens: 2 Americauna, 1 Jersey Giant, 1 Barred Rock, and one 8 month old puppy named Maggie. With the help of the boys, and my very patient wife, I am trying to farm this little plot of land. We'll see...